It occurred to me last night, that one of the reasons I found this years Vuelta and the overall winner (even top 5 for that matter) to be so boring is that neither the winner, Valverde, or any of the other top 5 won a single stage in this years race.  So, while my Grand Tour knowledge does not go that far back I wonder when the last time there was a Grand Tour winner that did not win a stage?  

France does three things well.  Bike racing, Wine and Cheese.  We have the other two covered for the time being so time for a special overview of the third.  So prepare your taste buds and hold your nose for three weeks of French cheese.  And throw some swiss and spanish cheeses in there just for good measure.

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While I am unaware of this being officially confirmed on any sites it appears the roster will include the following:

Carslos Sastre

Inigo Cuesta

Voldoymir Gustov

Heinrich Haussler

Thor Hushovd

Andreas Klier

Brett Lancaster

Jose Angel Gomez Marchante

Hayden Roulston

It would seem to me the biggest ommission from this list is Simon Gerrans given his winning a stage at the Tour last year and winning a stage of the Giro in May. 

Any thoughts?

I was curious to see what the highest scoring VDS team would be if you stayed within the 25 rider/150 point rule up through the last Cobbles update.  I didn't use any formulas or other math so this may not be exactly correct. If there is a higher combination possible please correct me.  It is also premised on who was available on the original list, so if there are names on here that were not in fact available that changes it.  (Scarponi was not available if I recall so he is not included) I didn't think anyone had done this yet, so I apologize if this has already been calculated.  This is what I came up with. 

Contador   25      861

Boonen      20      925

Hushovd    16      960

Pozzato       14     815

Devolder     14     565

Chavanel    12     618

Flecha        8      455

Lulu            6      488

B-Hagen    6      330

Burghardt   4      485

Petacchi     4       415

Wegmann  4      325

Haussler    2      985

Colom       2       390

Klier           2       320

Elmiger     2        305

Leezer       1        250

Van Impe   1      240

Leukemans 1   230

Ista             1      200

Hayman     1     190

Galdos      1     175

Rabon       1      175

Rossi        1     160

Tondo        1     150

Total:  11012

Saw a news story on CN that says that Cervelo test team was not given a wild card bid for Dauphine Libere and BMC was included instead.  I will admit this doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.  Cervelo has been one of the hottest teams of the year and of course includes that reigning TdF champion Carlos Sastre.  Nothing against BMC, as they have plenty of talented riders on the team that deserve the opportunity, but I don't think they hold come close to the level of Cervelo.  Any thoughts?

I started a small discussion about this in the Pais Vasco post race thread, but considering the way that Alberto Contador seems to be able to accelerate and climb away from guys at will, I was intrigued to see who people thought is the best pure climber in the last 15 years or so.  Yes I understand that some of this will be tainted by doping talk, so maybe it is not a fair comparison.  Do you think anyone currently has better climbing abilities than Contador?  Was Pantani better than Contador?  What about Armstrong?  Just throw some names out there. 

Just curious is anyone knows what races Cunego is going to be doing this year or if that is even known yet.  Just haven't seen his name come up much in any stories recently.  I am assuming Giro, Tour, maybe some of the Ardennes and of course Lombardia at the end of the year, but what has he done in that past other than those.   He seems to be completely off the radar right now.